So I found this little gem. Let’s see. Countless laws of the world are broken to make her backstory somewhat plausible. She became a cop at 16 because is supa smart (with an IQ of 240!) and supa special!! She also displays absolutely no emotional damage despite her twagic past. And, in fact, she’s supa popular, lives a perfect life in NYC and has basically has become more important than the actual main character in the book she’s from.
Her bio is very tl;dr.
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Character Name: Phoebe Benson
Fandom: Maximum Ride and Law and Order
Age: 16
Birthday: May 17, 1996
Gender: Female
Species: Human Experiment
Height: 5’ 5”
Weight: 115 lbs.
Hair Color: Blonde
Eye Color: Blue
Sexuality: Straight
Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California
Location: New York, New York
Education: Was educated at the lab she grew up in. Current senior at Columbia University who plans to attend the City University of New York Law School next fall.
Job: Case manager and investigator for the NYPD (in training to become a detective) and NYC Supreme Court, freelance police sketch artist, and political activist.
Personality: Phoebe’s personality is definitely a dual-edged sword, so to speak. To her friends and people she cares about, she is known to be extremely kind, friendly and caring. She has a good sense of humor and loves making friends.
However, as nice as Phoebe can be, she can also be rude, bitchy and obnoxious. She can be somewhat selfish (though she’s working on it). Phoebe is often a huge asshole if someone rubs her the wrong way, she’s in a bad mood, or just feels that the situation warrants her acting like that. She is easily annoyed, sarcastic, and often condescending as well. Not to mention EXTREMELY, and I mean EXTREMELY legalistic. If she suspects someone of doing something illegal, or immoral (in her opinion) all bets are off. She is very judgmental and feels that criminals need to be stopped by any means possible.
Phoebe only respects those who she feels are worthy of it, so if she doesn’t like you, you’ll figure it out pretty quickly. She tends to hold grudges against those who have wronged her, especially the whitecoats, who she is determined to catch.
Phoebe is obviously extremely intelligent. She is very good at analyzing situations, planning, reasoning, ect. However, often times, she is too smart for her own good. She can jump to conclusions which she believes to be true, without fully understanding the situation. She is very determined to pursue her beliefs, however, if someone has a good reasoning, they can talk her out of something. Overall, Phoebe usually does a good job of seeing the big picture and logical side of things, but she often sees things as black and white-the law being the ultimate authority.
Special Abilities/Powers: Phoebe has a genetically altered brain (see background), so she has superhuman intelligence and great logical thinking and problem-solving skills. She also has an eidetic memory, meaning she can remember nearly anything she sees perfectly. Other than that, she has an enhanced sense of intuition. She can tell how many people are in nearby rooms or areas without going to check for herself. Finally, Phoebe’s brain is regenerative, so she can recover from head injuries easily.
Background: Phoebe spent the first fourteen years of her life growing up in a lab in Los Angeles, California. Called Subject #5308, she was created as a genetic experiment by the illegal company Itex. She named herself after Phoebe Caulfield, a character in her favorite book, The Catcher in the Rye. Her DNA was altered so that she has two extra chromosomes and other genes that changed how her brain functioned, so she is able to use more of her brain than most humans and is amazingly intelligent. Most of her life was spent learning an incredible amount of information and being tested on constantly. She was treated better than most other experiments due to her success, but she was still an experiment nonetheless. Though she didn’t like the conditions she grew up in, she accepted them as a part of her life, given she didn’t know any other way of life other than what she had read in books.
The turning point in her life came when she was fourteen and met ten-year-old Ava. Ava was kidnapped by the scientists from an orphanage, and lived in Phoebe’s room with her for a while, until she died due to an experiment gone wrong. This deeply affected Phoebe and, in addition to what she had heard about others escaping, caused her to take a chance and escape at last.
Phoebe spent about half a year on the run, doing whatever she could to survive. Still not used to living in the normal, human world, she ended up being involved in a bad crowd. She lived with a group of bums and drug dealers and was involved in an abusive relationship. Phoebe saved up enough money to buy a bus ticket north, and planned to reinvent herself in a small town in the mountains, but as she was preparing to leave town she was kidnapped and taken back to the lab. The scientists felt that her time on the outside had made her too uncooperative, and they were going to erase her memory, but the police caught them just in time and shut down the lab.
One of the nicer scientists, Dr. Stevens, had supposedly quit working for the lab years before and invited Phoebe to move in with her in Connecticut. Phoebe accepted, and this arrangement lasted for a few months. While Dr. Stevens tried her best to be a mother figure to Phoebe and give her a comfortable life, she never was completely able to stop viewing her as a test subject. Not only that, Dr. Stevens’s husband and kids felt that the situation was bizarre and Phoebe never felt at home there. Because of her intelligence, she decided to go to college, and got accepted into Columbia University in New York City with a full scholarship plus housing. Phoebe decided to go for it, and it was off to the Big Apple.
She had some trouble adjusting to her new life, but soon made lots of friends and was able to get a job in the legal system. After some time, she even opened up to her friends at Columbia about being…not exactly normal, and started to become more involved at work, going from a file clerk to a case manager and investigator, helping solve cases. Phoebe figured, aside from helping shut down the occasional Itex lab, that she was free from them for good.
However, unexpectedly, she was kidnapped again in October 2012. Back at the lab, she was tested on again and her intuition and senses were enhanced even more. She escaped and returned home to New York, expecting things to go back to normal, but her life took another turning point. After she returned, the story of her kidnapping leaked to the press, and she went completely public.
The publicity surrounding Phoebe and who she is turned out to be both good and bad. Being somewhat of a celebrity, at least around the New York area, has allowed her to reach out to others she wouldn’t have otherwise met, and shut down even more labs. Working with the NYPD, she’s been able to expose Itex for who they really are and help send the people responsible for their experiments to prison. Phoebe has become more involved in the government as well, and is seen as a true leader.
On the downside? The whitecoats are out to get her even more than before. She’s been attacked, kidnapped and taken back to the labs several times recently, and has a particularly obnoxious Eraser trying to get her. Not only does Itex hate her for what she’s done to bring the company down, she’s also attracted the attention of other criminals-murderers, gangsters, and the like-for her work in locking up criminals and helping New York City toughen up against crime.
Phoebe’s life is, for the most part, pretty normal, except for the fact that she’s got a company of psychopaths on her tail, and the fact that she’s a teenager in an adult’s world. Despite her age, she’s known as one of the most hardworking investigators in the NYPD, as well as a great friend. She plans to attend law school next year to become a criminal prosecutor, but is also interested in other fields within the legal system. Her life hasn’t been easy, but she’s grown up a lot in a short period of time, gotten stronger, more confident, and more sure of herself. Phoebe knows what she wants in life, and she’ll be damned if she lets anyone stop her.